How Matching and Search Work

There are two API options for comparing business data to the Markaaz Global Business Directory: Advanced Match and Search. Advanced Match offers options for additional metadata to be returned in addition to multiple "matches" based on how many entities are requested. The "best match", the one with the highest match confidence score, is always returned as the first entity in the response. The Search API offers the ability for your organization to search the Markaaz Global Business Directory with nominal or complete requests of input data, such as name and country, to find businesses that meet your search criteria.

Matching Strategies

Many different business attributes are used to identify the best candidates based on the input record submitted in the API request.

• Identifying Attributes: Name (Including Legal Name, AKA/DBA and Former Names), Address (Including Registered, Physical, Mailing and Former Addresses)
• Location Attributes: Phone Number, URL
• National IDs and other IDs: National ID (ex. VAT), TaxID (FEIN, EIN, TaxID), LEI

Markaaz Data Matching Algorithm

1. Clean and normalize input data as a method to improve the accuracy and speed of the algorithm:

   • As a part of this step, we perform the following operations on both our stored data and the input string to be compared. Some examples include:

     • Lowercase all the letters.
     • Remove any special characters.
     • Remove any additional white space.
     • Replace the words with abbreviations with original words.
     • Replace accented characters with their base forms.

2. Check common tokens within strings:

   • This step checks for common tokens (words) between Markaaz data and the input values. The outcome influences the field-level Match Grades included in the API response.
     • For example: We are comparing two strings (string1 & string2). For example, string1 = "ABC Manufacturing Company" and string2 = "ABC Company" will set the internal common tokens flag as true.
       • The tokens for string1 are: ["ABC", "Manufacturing", "Company"]
       • And the tokens for string2 are: ["ABC", "Company"]
     • Another example: string1 = "ABC Manufacturing Company" and string2 = "XYZ Ltd" will set the internal common tokens flag as false, as there are no matching tokens.

3. Calculate Match Grade:

   • We are using Sørensen-Dice Coefficient string similarity algorithm for calculating the Match Grade.

Match Score and Grade Output

• Each matched entity will receive an overall match score.
• Each input field will be provided a grade against each field in response payload. The Advanced Match API will return those field grades when the option is enabled.
• Entities that match more parameters will have a higher match confidence and a better chance of being discovered in the directory.

Advanced Match and Search Comparison